"When I DEROSed out of SOG and headed back to the world, Frenchy drew me aside and asked me to ship him five hundred rounds of civilian ammunition."

"I don't-"

"He carried a Colt automatic in a tanker's shoulder holster over his tiger suit. I just assumed it was a .45, same as mine. No, it was a .38 Super. He told me how he loved the .38 Super, it had so much less recoil than a .45 for the same killing power, plus extra rounds in the mag. He called it a pro's gun."

"Jesus," said Russ.

"It's more than-"

But Bob stopped.

A plane. That was it. The sound of an airplane engine, steady, not increasing in speed, just low enough and far enough away, almost a fly's buzz.

"Go on," said Russ.

"Just shut up," Bob said.

"What is-"

"Don't look around, don't speed up, don't slow down, you just stay very calm now," Bob said.

He himself didn't look around. Instead, he closed his eyes and listened, trying hard to isolate the airplane engine from the roar of the truck, the buffeting of the wind, the vibrations of the road. In time, he had it.

Very slowly he turned his head, yawning languidly as he went along.

Off a mile on the right, a white twin-engine job, maybe a Cessna. Those babies went 240 miles per hour. Either there was a terrific headwind howling out of the east, or the pilot was hovering right at the stall speed to stay roughly parallel and in the same speed zone with the truck.

"It's more than coincidence," Bob said, "that you got the one man in America there who could do such a thing and that he's a great believer in the .38 Super, just what Jimmy was shooting. I smell Frenchy all over it. I think Frenchy threw it together, real smart, very fast, a fucking Agency home run the whole way. Not for the Agency, maybe, but for someone else. Someone powerful, that I guarantee you."

He glanced quickly out the window. The plane was turning lazily away.

"Yeah, well-it's okay? I mean, you tensed up there, now you're relaxed. Everything's okay, right?"

"Oh, every goddamn thing's just superfine," said Bob, yawning again, "except of course we are about to git ambushed."

"Air to Alpha and Baker," said Red, holding steady at 2,500 feet, running east, loafing again, dangerously near stall.

"Alpha here," came a voice.

"What about Baker?"

"Oh, yeah, uh, I'm here too. I figured he said he was here, you'd know I was here."

"Forget figuring. Tell me exactly what I ask you. Got that?"

"Yes sir," said Baker contritely.

"Okay, I want you in pursuit. He's about four miles ahead of you, traveling around fifty miles an hour. No Smokeys, no other traffic on the road. You go into maximum pursuit. But I am watching you, and on my signal you drop down to fifty-five. I don't want him seeing you move superfast, do you read?"

"Yes sir."

"Then step on it, goddammit."

"Yes sir."

"You hang steady there, Mike and Charlie. No need you racing anywhere, they are coming to you. I see intercept in about four minutes. I'm going to let Alpha and Baker close in, then I'll bring you and Baker into play, Mike. You read?"

"Yes sir."

He looked back along the road and out of the distance watched as two large sedans roared along the highway at over a hundred miles an hour, trailing dust and closing fast with the much slower moving truck.

"Oh, I smell blood. I smell the kill. It's looking very good. Alpha, I see you and your buddy closing. You just keep closing, you're getting close, okay now, slow way down. Mike, you and Charlie now, okay, you start moving out, nice gentle pace, about fifty-five, we are two minutes away, I got you both in play."

Someone inadvertently held a mike button down and Red heard strange things over the radio-some harsh tense scraping and what sounded like someone systematically turning a television set on and off. Then he realized: that was the dry breathing of men about to go into a shooting war and they were cocking and locking their weapons for it.

Words poured out of Russ as if he'd lost control of them, and he could not control their tone: they sounded high, tinny, almost girlish.

"Should we stop?" he moaned. "Should we pull off and call the police? Is there a turnoff? Should we-"

"You just sit tight, don't speed up, don't slow down. We got two cars behind us. I bet we got some traffic ahead of us. And we got a plane off on the right coordinating it. We are about to get bounced and bounced hard."

Russ saw Bob shimmy in the seat, but he could tell he was reaching to get something behind the seat without disturbing his upright profile. He looked into the rearview mirror and saw two cars appear from behind a bend in the road.

"Here's the first and only rule," said Bob steadily. "Cover, not concealment. I want you out of the truck with the front wheel well and the engine block between you and them. Their rounds will tear right through the truck and get to you otherwise."

Russ's mind became a cascade of silvery bubbles; he fought to breathe. His heart weighed a ton and was banging out of control. There was no air.

"I can't do it," he said. "I'm so scared."

"You'll be all right," Bob said calmly. "We're in better shape than you think. They have men and they think they have surprise, but we've got the edge. The way out of this is the way out of any scrape: we hit 'em so hard so fast with so much stuff they wish they chose another line of work."

Ahead, one and then a second vehicle emerged from the shimmery mirage. The first was another pickup, black and beat-up, and behind it, keeping a steady rate fifty yards behind, another sedan. Russ checked the rearview: the two cars were drawing closer, but not speeding wildly. He made out four big profiles, sitting rigidly in the lead car.

"Don't stare at 'em, boy," said Bob, as he overcame the last impediment and got free what he was pulling at. In his peripheral vision Russ saw that it was the Ruger Mini-14 and the paper bag. He pulled something compact from the bag; Russ realized it was the short .45 automatic, which he quickly stuffed into his belt on his right side, behind his kidney. He groped for something else.

Russ looked up. The truck drew nearer. It was less than a quarter of a mile away. It would be on them in seconds now.

"Where is it?" demanded Bob of himself harshly, fear large and raspy in his voice as he clawed through the bag. His fear terrified Russ more powerfully than the approaching vehicles.

What is he looking for? Russ wondered desperately. Russ wondered desperately.

Red watched as his masterpiece unfolded beneath him with such solemn splendor. It was all in the timing and the timing was exquisite. De la Rivera in the Mike truck, followed by the four men in Charlie, closed from the front at around forty miles per hour. Meanwhile, the Alpha and Baker vehicles, moving at the speed limit, steadily narrowed the distance between themselves and Swagger. They would be fifty or so yards behind him when de la Rivera hit Swagger's truck and blew it off the road.

"You're closing nicely, Alpha and Baker," he crooned. "You're looking good there, Mike."

They had him!

It would work!

Red pulled in his breath, felt his heart inflate and his blood pressure spiral.

De la Rivera was now taking over.

"Okay, muchachos muchachos, is so very muy bueno muy bueno, let's be very, very calm now, let's stay calm and cool, I see you, Alpha, you're so very fine, let's do a quick double check on our pieces, make sure we got our mags seated, our bolts locked, our safeties in the red zone, let's stay muy glace muy glace, icy, icy, very icy, very cool, it's happening, oh, it's gonna be so good so good for all of us." for all of us."

The vehicles were closing.

They had reached a flat, high section of the road, where the dwarf, ice-pruned white oak lay gnarled and stunted on either side, yielding swiftly to vistas on either side of other ranges.

"Now you listen," said Bob fiercely. "This truck's going to try and whack you. The split second before you pull even to him, I want you to drop to second and gun this motherfucker. That should carry us by his lunge and cut the two boys off behind us. Then I want a hard left, you rap the rear of his follow car, really mess him up, shake up the boys inside; you continue from that into a hard left panic stop hard left panic stop, we skid across the road and come to rest in the shoulder on that side, so's we can fall back and get into them trees and down the side of the mountain if need be. Okay, you're coming out my my side of the vehicle and you're breaking left to the front wheel well where you're going to cover. You take the bag. Your job is going to be to feed me magazines from the bag as I need them. You watch; when I pop a mag, you hand me the next one, bullets out so's I can slap her in and get back to rock and roll." side of the vehicle and you're breaking left to the front wheel well where you're going to cover. You take the bag. Your job is going to be to feed me magazines from the bag as I need them. You watch; when I pop a mag, you hand me the next one, bullets out so's I can slap her in and get back to rock and roll."

"Yes sir," said Russ, trying to remember it all, desperate that he would forget it, but amazed somehow that already there was a plan, and somehow also calmed by it. And Bob seemed calm too.

"You gotta stay calm, you gotta stay cool," said Bob.

"I'm okay," Russ said, and he was.

"Ah," said Bob, "here the goddamn thing is." And with that he withdrew something from the bag and Russ could see that it was a long, curved magazine, different from the others, with a red-tipped cartridge seated in its lips. said Bob, "here the goddamn thing is." And with that he withdrew something from the bag and Russ could see that it was a long, curved magazine, different from the others, with a red-tipped cartridge seated in its lips.

The truck was on them. It was happening right now.

"What's that?" Russ had time to ask as the universe unlatched from reality and fell into dreamlike slow motion. He heard Bob seat the magazine and with a clak! clak! let the bolt fly home. let the bolt fly home.

"Forty rounds M-196 ball tracer," said Bob. "We're fixing to light these boys up."

Red watched in full anticipation of his precisely choreographed envelopment, simultaneously banking to the left and adding power so that he could hold the spectacle beneath him as he circled around it, gull-like. He watched as the vehicles seemed to combine and it was almost magical the way he'd seen it in his mind and it was working out in reality.

But there seemed to be something ...

It was happening so fast, there was dust, so much dust, he couldn't ...

Confusion. He'd never seen a battle before except in the movies but in the movies everything was clear. That was the point point of movies. Here nothing was clear, it was a helter-skelter, some new dance, a reinvention. of movies. Here nothing was clear, it was a helter-skelter, some new dance, a reinvention.

He heard them on the radio as it unfolded in microtime.

"Ah, no, goddamn-"

Whang! the jarring bang of metal on metal. the jarring bang of metal on metal.

"Jesus, what is-"

"Look out, he's firing, he's-"

"Oh, fuck, we're on fire. Christ, we're burning!" we're burning!"

"I'm hit, I'm hit, oh, shit, I'm hit-"

"The flames, the flames."

BEOWWWWWWWWWWWWWWW- A high-pitched scream pierced Red's ears as he banked around; he winced, shuddered, wondering what the hell that was, and when he saw the geyserlike surge of blazing gasoline, he knew the microphone had melted.

It was happening. The truck's fender with its cyclopslike headlight was as big as a house falling on him, but at that second Russ slammed the gearshift, punched the pedal and with a surprising giddy lightness, his own vehicle shot ahead and the oafish rammer missed, veered to correct and jacked out of control, tumbling savagely backwards amid a sudden huge blast of dust. Bob's left hand reached for the wheel and wrenched it to the left. With a tremendous jolt the pickup slammed into the follow car, rocked crazily and continued to spin around, hauling up a shroud of dust as it fishtailed, then came to a rest, crazily canted to one side, half in and half out of the roadside gully.

Through it all, Russ had the ghastly sensation of ghosts, as faces lit up by rage and surprise floated by in the follow car, so close yet so far away. He felt that he was looking at men under ice, in a different world, their mouths working madly, their eyes swollen like his mother's deviled eggs from so long ago. Then it all went to swirl and blur and vanished in the weird perspective of the canted windshield and the cloud of rolling dust.

He blinked.

Wasn't he supposed to be doing doing something? something?

"Out, goddammit," barked Bob, and Russ clawed at his safety belt, glad that he'd had it on, felt it fall away and began to slither across the seat after already vanished Bob and out the door. He remembered the bag, and felt the loaded mags rattling around inside as he disengaged from the vehicle, slid fast down the front fender of the truck to the wheel well, where Bob had already set up in a taut, hunched shooter's position. Russ couldn't dive for cover. He had to see see.

When he looked over the hood, the spectacle stunned him.

Upside down, the black pickup had cantilevered onto the shoulder on the other side of the road in its own cloud of dust, cutting off that lane. The two cars following Bob and Russ had slewed to a halt behind it, just coming out of their own panic stops and skids. They appeared to have collided themselves, the rear one smashing into the front one.

The truck's follower had also slewed to a halt to avoid smashing into the destroyed truck. It was almost directly across the road from Russ. There was a moment of horrified silence. Inside the cars, men fumbled in confusion, trying not to shoot each other, trying to locate their target, which wasn't where it should be.

Then, from just behind Russ, Bob fired.

Even in the bright light of day, the tracers leaked radiance to mark their passage as they flew across the narrow distance. They were like phenomena in a physics experiment, ropes of incandescence as straight as if drawn by a ruler, unbearably quick, quicker than a heartbeat or a blink, illusions possibly. Bob fired three rounds inside a second low into the car directly across from him; what was he shooting for? Not men, for he was shooting not into the passenger compartment but above the rear tire and Russ- Then the car was gone in a huge flash as the tracers lit up its fuel tank. The noise was a thunderclap, throwing feathers of flame everywhere as it seemed for one delirious second it was raining flame. All around them, the world caught fire; and a wave of crushing heat rolled against Russ. He heard screams in the roar, and a flaming phantasm ran at him but fell under the weight of its own destruction into the roadway.

Motion struck at Russ's peripheral vision and he saw that one of the follow cars had gunned from behind the topsyturvy truck.

"Coming around, coming around," he screamed.

But Bob was shooting even as Russ yelled and the tracers flicked quick and nasty like a whipcrack and seemed to liquefy the oncomer's windshield; it dissolved into a sleet of jewels as the car lost control and went hard into the gully, kicking up a gout of dirt.

"Magazine! Magazine!" Bob screamed, and Russ slapped a twenty-rounder, bullets outward, into his palm and he sunk it into the rifle, freed the bolt to slam forward just as the third car came around, bristling with guns. But Bob took it cleanly, riddling its windshield with a burst of ball ammunition, and then held fire, emptying what remained of the magazine into the windows and doors as the car went by. The car never deviated, but sped by furiously, more as if it hoped to get away than do them any harm, and a hundred yards down the road it noticed that its cargo was dead men and it veered into a gully, lurched out surfing a wave of dirt and grass and came to a broken ending amid splintered white oaks.

And suddenly it was quiet except for the dry cracking of the wind and the hiss of the flames.

"Jesus, you got them all," Russ said in utter astonishment and devotion, but Bob was by him, .45 in hand. He'd seen something. Two men with submachine guns had extricated themselves from the wreckage in the gully just before them, and started up the little embankment. But Bob stood above them and got his pistol into play so fast it was a blur. Did they see him yet? One did, and tried to get his weapon on target but Bob fired so quickly Russ thought for a second he had some kind of machine gun, floating six empties in the air, and the two shooters went down like rag dolls. One was an immense man in an expensive jumpsuit with gold chains on. He lay flat, eyes blinkless and vacant as the blood turned his sweatshirt strawberry and an odd detail leaped out at Russ: he had a necklace of scar tissue as if someone had gone to work on his throat with a chain saw but only got halfway around before thinking the better of it.

Another moment of silence. Bob used it to change magazines.

Russ looked around.

"Jesus Christ," he said. It reminded him of TV coverage of the Highway of Death out of Kuwait City after the Warthogs and the Blackhawks finished a good day's killing. Four wrecked vehicles, one on its back, one boiling with black, oily flame of petroleum products oxidizing into the sky, bodies and blood pools and shards of glass and discarded weapons everywhere.

"What do you think of that, you motherfucker!" Bob suddenly shouted, and Russ saw that he was screaming at a white airplane a half mile out low and banking away to the south.

"You got them all," said Russ. "You must have killed twenty men."

"More like ten. They were professionals. They took their chances. Now let's see if we done bagged a trophy."

Then he strode across the littered roadway to the ramming truck, upside down and half in the gully. The odor of gasoline was everywhere.

He opened the door and peered in. Russ looked over his shoulder.